Fallout 2 - Defined the Series

PCGamesN believe that Fallout 2 defined the series.

Grotesque monsters. A campy ‘Space Race' aesthetic. Stories that unfold subtly and organically, based on how you play. A lot of Fallout's core characteristics we nowadays take for granted. But back in 1997, when a small, now-defunct studio called Black Isle were just starting out, the classic Fallout style was far from recognisable.

The first game had sold reasonably well, but the critical response had been feverish; hoping to capitalise on the Fallout buzz, Black Isle's publisher, Interplay, quickly commissioned a sequel. Bigger, better, and with much more for players to do, development on Fallout 2 also had to be completed inside nine months. For Feargus Urquhart, co-director of Fallout 1 and one of Black Isle's founders, the nuclear heat was on.

"We'd started working on Fallout 2 before we'd even shipped Fallout 1," he tells me. "That was in the middle of 1997. By the beginning of 1998, when Interplay was having some financial difficulties, they decided they wanted to make Fallout 2 and make it in the same amount of time as the original, and as far as they were concerned, we'd already been developing it for half a year already. So that gave us basically nine months to make the whole game."

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